Sunday, October 12, 2008

We dined here with my husband's parents to celebrate his Dad's birthday. The ambience was very nice and the table properly appointed, but the meal left a lot to be desired. Fleming's is owned by Outback, so I was hoping for a great dining experience in the expensive restaurant category, in the class of the Raindancer Steak House. Alas, this was not to be.They did make an effort to make my father-in-law happy for his birthday by bringing him a "birthday salad" composed of a wedge of iceberg lettuce heart slathered in bleu cheese dressing which Dad absolutely LOVES after we declined the cake offer (we had gotten an Ambrosia Cake from Baton Rouge's best bakery that was at home for later) but while it showed the dedication of our waiter, the rest of the meal was substantially below what we had expected for a restaurant of this alleged calibre. It was WAY WAY overpriced for a steak full of gristle. Service was good but it should be for what they charge. As expensive as Ruth's Chris and also a la carte which I find annoying--for a $60 steak would it kill you to toss me a 50 cent potato? The salads were good, the wine list impressive, but the steaks were a miserable failure all the way around. I'd never eat there again, I've had better steaks at Golden Corral than the miserable piece of meat they served me at this failure of a restaurant. My father-in-law had a good time, but he always has a good time with us--we could have stayed at home and gotten a slew of boiled crawfish like we did last time we were in Baton Rouge, spicy and fresh cooked with corn and potatoes, we dumped them on the patio table a had a feast! Fleming's needs to find a new meat supplier or they need to lower the prices because their meat supplier is ripping them off in a big way--and apparently their executive chef doesn't know how to pick out and butcher a decent piece of meat.